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Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Wake Up, Europe !!! - Germans take to the streets to protest against 'Islamisation'

A new type of anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as
thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing
“Islamisation” of the country.

The new protests, which began in the city of Dresden in the former East
Germany, feature no neo-Nazi slogans and have nothing to do with the
traditional far right.

Instead the demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests
against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall
25 years ago, “Wir sind das Volk”, or “We are the people”. They say they
want to preserve Germany’s Judeo-Christian Western culture.

The protests come as Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) is seeking
to distance itself from a draft proposal for its party conference which said
that immigrants should speak German not only in public, but at home as well.

Germany is now the second most popular destination in the world for migrants,
after the US, and the country is struggling to cope with an unprecedented
influx of asylum-seekers.

The protests were started by a local man, Lutz Bachmann, with no background in
politics. When he called his first demonstration in October, only a few
hundred turned up, but the movement has snowballed, and last week 7,500
came.

Pegida has inspired similar movements across Germany. Though the numbers have
not been as high as in Dresden so far, marches have been called in cities
from Düsseldorf to Munich.

Demonstrations against Muslim immigration in Cologne earlier this year turned
violent, but unlike the far-right groups and self-proclaimed “hooligans”
behind those protests, Pegida insists its movement is peaceful.

It has run into opposition, though: last week a counter-demonstration by
around 1,000 people succeeded in blocking Pegida’s way through Dresden, and
in the city of Kassel, counter-demonstrators actually outnumbered those who
marched against immigrants.

Critics contend that known neo-Nazis have infiltrated the protests, while Mr
Bachmann, who has called for “zero tolerance for criminal immigrants”, was
forced to acknowledge he “has a past”, after a local newspaper reported he
has a lengthy criminal record of his own, including convictions for burglary
and drug-dealing.

He has been at pains to stress that he is not opposed to genuine political
refugees, only to economic migrants who “take advantage” of the German
system, and has no problem with Islam but is worried about erosion of German
culture.

Concerns for the German culture plunged Bavaria’s ruling CSU into its own
controversy, after a draft proposal for the opening motion at the party
conference called for immigrants to speak German at home.

“Whoever wants to live here permanently should be encouraged to speak German
in public and within the family,” the draft said.

After a storm of criticism, including the Twitter hashtag YallaCSU, Arabic for
“Let’s go, CSU”, and questions over how such a policy could possibly be
enforced, Andreas Scheuer, the party’s general secretary, sought to limit
the damage.

The proposal was only ever intended as “encouragement”, he said. “Obligation,
nannying or control are out of the question.”